


Leave Out All The Rest

by isthisenoughorcanwegohigher



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Fever Code spoilers, I guess anyways, Newt's letter fic, Suicide Attempt, and yes the title is the linkin park song no one asked you to question me about it, except it's not really the letter because i wrote this before the movie out for more than a week, i'm in the process of moving all my maze runner work from tumblr to here (you all know why), if you haven't read TFC yet honestly i applaud you i wish i could unread it, if you're new to me and my work you'll learn VERY quickly that i love angst, if you're not new to me and my work then. well. you already know., it was rude as hell and made me cry, love is the wrong word. i thrive on angst, so it seemed fitting that this was the first thing i put up on here, this is the first thing i ever wrote for the maze runner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisenoughorcanwegohigher/pseuds/isthisenoughorcanwegohigher
Summary: Newt knows he has the Flare. He also knows that if he and Thomas are going to rescue Minho, there is a very high chance that that he won't survive long enough to get the serum to save his life. He'd accept his own death-he had once before-but he wouldn't accept leaving Thomas without an explanation, without a reason, without something to remember him by. So, he decides to write Thomas a letter.





	Leave Out All The Rest

**Author's Note:**

> This has an archive warning for major character death so you know what that means. Sorry, Newt. You're the greatest, Newt.

He knew what has happening to him. The constant feeling of bugs running around just beneath the surface of his skin made sure of that. When he wasn’t constantly fighting the urge to scratch at his skin until it bled, he was suffering from bouts of anger that left him terrified.

It was ironic, he thought to himself. After everything, when his death was close at hand, he was scared. He wasn’t ready to die. 

It was especially ironic considering he remembered the day he threw himself from the Maze walls clearer than he now sometimes remembered who he was. He hadn’t been scared of dying then. He’d been ready for it back then, ready to relinquish himself to the darkness that pressed down on him in the Maze.

For a moment, Newt allowed himself to be lost in the memory of that day.

_The ivy was thick and wooden in his grip. It was easy to climb–the stiffness of the vines didn’t make them brittle or easy to break. It made them strong._

_A small laugh bubbled up in his chest. It was too bad the same couldn’t be said of him. Two years spent in this shuck place had broken him down to nothing but a shell. And if all went according to plan, it would only be the shell that was left on the floor of the Maze for the Grievers to find._

_In fact, the higher Newt climbed, the more he began to wish that Grievers attacked people in the daylight, because it would save him the trouble of having to climb the vines if one just so happened to attack him and he just wasn’t fast enough to get away. Convenient. Very convenient. Unfortunately, just like finding a way out of the bloody Maze, his death was his own responsibility._

_Newt paused. He’d gotten as high as he could go. It would have to do. He breathed slowly, in through his nose and out through his mouth, painfully aware that this would probably be the last time the slightly tangy air of the Maze crossed his lips. He felt his heart singing in his chest, as if it would leap out of his ribcage and fall to the floor below of its own accord._

_He clenched the vine in his hand harder. In the early days of the Glade, he’d had an odd appreciation for how beautiful the Creators had made their prison, but like his hope and his desire to continue living, it had faded. Now, though, from this height, with the knowledge that this would be the last thing he saw, Newt saw the Maze and the Glade in all of its beauty. He could almost appreciate the work the Creators must have put into it. Almost._

_A clicking on the wall next to him alerted him to a beetle blade. The tiny little cameras the Creators had put into this shuck place, recording everyone and everything they said and did. Newt hoped they’d hear this. He leveled his gaze directly at the beetle._

_“I don’t know who you people are,” he said, “but I hope you’re happy. I hope you get a real buggin’ kick out of watching us suffer. And then you can die and go to hell. This is on you.”_

_And then he let go._

A dull throb started up in his leg. Newt reached down and roughly massaged the skin, his fingers chasing away the feelings that had come next.

Next Alby had found him on the floor with a broken leg.

Next he had spent days and weeks physically recovering from an injury that Clint said was a miracle. He could have died. He could have broken something worse than his leg and been left paralyzed, and then were would he be when the Runners– he wasn’t one anymore, Minho had been fiercely adamant about that one– finally found a way out?

Next came the hate. He hated the Creators again, harder, for sticking him in the Maze, for taking his memories, for making him so miserable every day. He hated Alby for finding him and bringing him back to the Glade. He hated Clint and Jeff for patching him up. He hated Minho for cutting him from the Runners. He hated Alby even more for making him shucking second-in-command. He hated himself, too, for failing at the one thing he wanted most in the world. He hated himself for not being strong enough to manage to die when he wanted to.

Next was regret. He felt sorry for what he’d put Alby and Minho through. He regretted climbing the wall and hoped he’d never have to feel the wooden texture of vines again. He even began to feel regret over the himself–what he’d done and not done to put himself in that position.

Next there was hope, again. Newt woke up one day with a renewed fire ignited deep within him, and he vowed to fight until the bitter end. He would get himself and the rest of the Gladers out of the Maze, even if it was the last thing he got to do.

Then there was Thomas. The day Thomas arrived, everything changed. Newt found a reason not to just hope, but to care. Maybe it was the way Thomas’s eyes light up when he started talking, his hands waving in the air. Maybe it was the mischievous smile that seemed to always cross his face when no one else wanted to smile. Whatever it was about the Greenie, Newt felt something in him that wanted to keep Thomas safe. Which was why it was so damn frustrating that Thomas had a knack for putting himself in danger.

With Thomas in the mix, Newt and the others accomplished what they’d been trying to do for so long. They got out of the Maze. In a whirlwind of days, Thomas and Minho had managed to find a way out. Newt fought tooth and nail the day they made their escape through the Griever Hole. He watched as his friends died so others could make it out.

It was in the hallways of the WICKED compound, with the blinking lights and the broken glass and the dead bodies, that Newt had kissed Thomas for the first time.

_Minho was laughing. _ _Of course Minho was laughing.__ They’d just been through what Newt was pretty sure would qualify as a circle of hell, if that was still a thing, and they’d escaped into an underground science lab. It really wasn’t that funny, but Newt didn’t have the heart to say something. Saying anything probably would have broken the spell, and it was such a nice spell to be under, to believe that they’d really done it, that they were really almost free of WICKED, of the people who’d stolen them from families they couldn’t remember and placed them in a life they would never forget._

_Like every spell, though, this one was broken too soon._

_“So…what now?” Teresa looked beseechingly at Thomas, like he held all the answers, like he held her world, and Newt felt something flare up inside of him. Only he could look at Thomas like that.  
_

_“I don’t know. What do you think, Newt?”  
_

_Newt didn’t realize Thomas was speaking to him until he heard his name again. God, Thomas could say his name over and over and Newt would never grow tired of hearing it. He would never grow tired of seeing how his lips curled as he said it, how his nose scrunched up as he–_

_“Newt!”_

_Right. Thomas was talking to him. What were they going to do next? Newt looked at Thomas a little while longer, his brain a storm of wishing he could be alone with the boy and wondering what he should say in response.  
_

_“I–” he started to say, but he stopped short. His emotions were quickly reaching a boiling point. He wanted to laugh and cry and shout all at the same time. He settled for giving Thomas a stormy, unreadable look before pulling the boy in for a fierce kiss.  
_

_One hand settled on Thomas’s neck, which was slick with sweat. The other gripped the boy’s shirt at the small of his back, clenching the material tightly between his fingers._

_Excluding the distant alarms, the hallway was suddenly very silent. Newt pulled away from Thomas. “I think I love you, Tommy,” he said, breathless._

_Thomas only smirked at him before pulling the second-in-command back in for another kiss._

_“Well shuck,” Minho said. “It’s about time, you slintheads.”  
_

If Newt had been worried about Thomas before they’d shared that kiss, it was nothing on how protective of the boy he became when they escaped from another WICKED compound and made their trek through the Scorch. A trek that had resulted in the deaths of Winston and Jack, in Teresa betraying their group to WICKED, and in Minho being dragged onto a Berg and taken from them.

And now here they were, sitting inside a crumbling and broken down building with a bunch of Cranks, waiting for the right moment to break into the most secure safe zone left. 

More accurately, Newt was sitting there, staring at the table, while Thomas and Frypan and Brenda and Gally rushed around making sure everything was in place for their next move. Kidnapping Teresa. Newt hadn’t heard of a plan that stupid since Thomas suggested going through the Griever Hole to get out of the bloody Maze. At least this had been Gally’s idea. He could blame the anger eating through his veins like fire on Gally for now. Gally, who was supposed to be dead, but wasn’t.  _Kind of like him._

Another wave of fear crashed over him. Newt spread his hands out in front of him. They were shaking. He watched, wondering if staring at them long enough would make them stop. A pair of hands closed over his own. Thomas. It was always Thomas.

“Tommy.” He didn’t look up. He couldn’t look up. He couldn’t bear to see the soft look in Thomas’s eyes, a look of love and concern and pity–a look that pretty soon Newt would never see again.

“Newt.” Thomas’s voice was measured, even. He tightened his grip on Newt’s trembling hands. Newt hoped he would never let go. “Newt, look at me.”

“I’m going to die, Tommy.” No point in beating around the bush. Newt still didn’t look at Thomas. A hand left his and met his chin, drawing his head up to face the boy sitting next to him. Newt never wanted to forget that look. He could have died right there and it would have been shucking heaven, to die looking into Thomas’s eyes, which held nothing but love. No concern. No pity.

“Not if I can help it. We’re going to get Minho and those other kids, and we’re going to get the cure they’ve been working on, too. I’m going to save you.” Thomas said this so seriously that Newt ached for any part of himself to believe what he’d just said.

“I’m bloody inspired,” he replied, his voice flat and emotionless. There was no point in showing emotion, he thought. Dead people didn’t have emotions.

“I mean it,” Thomas said, his voice sharp now. “I’m going to save you, Newt. I won’t let you die. I love you too much to let that happen.”

That wasn’t a fair argument. The number one rule of loving someone who’s dying is that you’re not supposed to tell them you love them, Newt was pretty sure of that. “Tommy–” he said again, and this time there was something there that was left unsaid, and this time his voice cracked. A tear slid down his cheek. “I’m scared.” Another tear.

Thomas bit his lower lip. Any other time, and Newt would have kissed the boy for doing it. Thomas knew it drove him crazy. Newt almost laughed. “I’m so scared, Tommy.”

“I know you are.” Thomas sat there for a moment, silent, watching the tears dripping down Newt’s face. He absently reached up and brushed them away with his thumb. “We’re almost ready to head out.”

Newt tried to steady his breathing. “I’ll join you in a minute. There’s something I need to do first.”

“Okay.” Thomas rose and was almost out of the room before Newt called after him.

“I love you, too.” The words were drawn from deep within him. Newt almost regretted them, almost, but the way Thomas’s shoulders relaxed just a hint filled him with relief instead.

Newt sat motionless for a long moment, and then he grabbed the paper and pencil still lying on the table and began to write.

_Thomas:_

_My fight’s almost over now. I can feel it. It feels stronger than anything else. And the harder I fight it, the faster it happens. I don’t know how much longer I have now. So there are some things I need to say._

_I  want you to know, Tommy, that if I had to go back and do all of this again, I’d do it all the same. WICKED may have taken my family away from me, but they gave me a new one. You, Minho, Alby, Chuck…. You guys became my family. My friends. The people I fought for._

_But you, Thomas, you became so much more than that. You became the light in the darkness I was shrouded in, the hope and the happiness in my life, and the reason it got easier to wake up each morning. I have loved you more than anything else in this shucking life. I will always love you._

_Don’t be afraid for me, Tommy. I’ve been through enough in this life without having to worry about what you’ll do when I’m gone. I’ve been strong for so long now, and it’s finally time to let go. I’ve never been like you, Tommy, so brave and so kind, so ready to jump into action. I’ve never been who you are. I never could be. No one can save me from this now, not you, not some bloody cure, not even myself._

_That’s why I want to ask you to forget me the way I’ll be soon, the way I’ll be at the end. I want you to hold on to the good memories, Tommy. Please. Don’t forget how nice things were before all of… this. Please remember the reasons I should be missed–the days in the Glade, working in the gardens, before the world went to shit; the nights we spent looking at the stars before all this, when getting Minho back was still just a plan, when we’d watch the sky for hours and talk about what our lives would be like if we weren’t on the run from WICKED. Remember the love we had and remember how we talked about our lives together and remember how much I have always loved you, Tommy, since the day you showed up in the Box._

_Don’t hate me for what’s happening right now, Tommy. Don’t forget me, but don’t forget to move on and let your heart love again._

_I love you, Tommy. So much. Remember that._

_–Newt_

Newt wiped off a stray tear that had fallen onto the page. He was ready now. He felt it. No more holding on. It was time to rescue Minho and let himself go in the process. He rolled the paper up and pushed it into the small canister that hung from his neck. When the time was right, he’d give it to Thomas.

Much later, Newt found himself on the streets outside WICKED, coughing and panting, being carried through a war zone by Minho, Gally, and Thomas. His hair was dripping with sweat and he wanted nothing more than to sit down on the street and let the Flare fully take him. He tried to regain his footing and staggered, bringing himself and Thomas to the ground. “Thomas,” he said weakly, reaching up and putting a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Thomas, go one without me.”

“No, Newt,” Thomas said. He peered around the corner and saw a group of Cranks running at the WICKED officers just up the street. His face was a storm cloud of conflict

“Thomas,” Newt said again, with a little more force. “Go.”

“He’s right,” Thomas said, ignoring Newt’s weak shove. “Minho, Gally, you go meet Brenda at the Berg, get the serum, then run back here. Go!”

Minho shot a worried glance at Newt, but with one last shove from Thomas, he got up and sprinted down the street and out of sight.

“Gally–go,” Thomas said. The former Builder didn’t argue. He took off after Minho, leaving Thomas and Newt alone.

Thomas took another look at the street, waited a moment, and then dragged Newt to his feet. “Come on,” he said, and he took off around the corner. “We’ve got to get to the Berg.”

Newt tried protesting, but wound up coughing instead.

“Hang on, Newt, we’re almost there.” There was a hint of desperation in Thomas’s voice that would have broken Newt’s heart if Newt wasn’t so focused on getting Thomas to leave him.

“Thomas.” This time, Newt knew Thomas heard him. He had clenched his jaw in his defiant manner that Newt had so often found endearing, but now he found that it only angered him.

Newt let the exhaustion hit him in all of its glory, and he dropped to his knees. “Thomas.”

“We’re almost there,” Thomas grunted, trying to tug Newt back to his feet. “Come on, Newt, please.”

Newt could be just as stubborn as Thomas. He refused to move. Thomas took the hint and dropped to his knees in front of Newt.

“Thomas, you need to leave me,” Newt muttered.

“No.”

“I’m not asking.”

“Neither am I.” Thomas’s voice was harsh. Newt never imagined the boy’s voice could hold so much anger for someone he cared about. “Stop acting like a child, Newt.”

If there was one thing Newt wasn’t anymore, it was a child. A powerful rage filled him, and he found the strength at last to move his head up and stare Thomas down. “Kill me,” he said at last, his tone cold. “If you won’t leave me, then kill me.”

“Don’t be crazy. I’m not doing either of those things.” Thomas didn’t break eye contact.

Both boys stared at each other, in their own private world, and time slowed to a crawl around them.

Thomas broke first. The anger left him in a rush, and he slumped forward, his hands coming up to brace himself on Newt’s shoulders. “I’m not leaving you, Newt.”

Newt used what will he had left to do two things. He tugged the chain around his neck, hard, yanking it off, and reached forward to shove it into the pocket of Thomas’s pants. Then he moved his hand to the holster resting on Thomas’s hip and pulled out the gun.

“Newt–” Thomas’s voice was weak with desperation.

Newt turned the gun and pointed it at himself, but as much courage as he had in the moment, he lacked the strength to pull the trigger. Bugger it all, he was still scared. Keeping the gun trained on himself, he forced the weapon into Thomas’s hand.

“Kill me,” he said again. Thomas shook his head. “Kill me!”

“I’m not killing you, Newt. I love you,” Thomas said. The hand Newt had forced the gun into shook violently. Newt found that he didn’t care. All he wanted was for his fight to finally be over.

“If you ever really loved me, Tommy, then kill me,” he said.

“I can’t,” Thomas whispered. “Newt, I can’t.”

They held eye contact for a moment longer, and then Newt leaned in and kissed Thomas.

It was a fierce kiss, an angry, scared, end-of-the-line goodbye kiss that left both boys shaking, and then Newt whispered in Thomas’s ear, “Please, Tommy. Please.”

Newt pulled away long enough to see the despair in Thomas’s eyes. He heard a loud rushing sound, felt a white-hot pain just beneath his collarbone, and then his world went black. 


End file.
